Monday, December 12, 2005

1. Two articles in Ohio, now the 1st state to lose its democracy. (Links: 1st and 2nd) "With new legislation, Ohio Republicans plan holiday burial for American Democracy"

2. The 14 Worst Corporate Evildoers - (New from Global Exchange) On issues like war crimes, torture, toxic dumping and stifling the freedom of speech, corporations like Coca Cola, Chevron and Philip Morris are way out ahead of the rest.

"But it was in the second segment when the real unreality of the show hit you. This was the roundtable, which featured David Brooks, E.J. Dionne, and Mike Allen, who had reported a piece on the inner workings of the Bush administration for tomorrow's Time, walked us through the door of unreality:...read on"

ALLEN: You talk to Republicans at Christmas parties, they think [the president] still has the makings of Reagan. There's still great promise in this administration.... If you talk to his friends, the president has not changed. They talk about a sort of Zen-like quality that he has.... They thought they were going to have to buck him up for Christmas. He was fine. He was reading military history, taking comfort in what happened to other commanders in chief who were underestimated in their time.

6. Top-Secret Cronies - Bush has stacked his foreign advisory board with his Texas business pals, who stand to profit from access to CIA and military intelligence.

"No discussion of cronyism in the Bush administration would be complete without talking about PFIAB, short for the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. George W. Bush's latest appointments to the PFIAB, which advises the president on how various intelligence agencies are performing, represent a who's who of the Halliburton-Texas Rangers-oil business crony club that made Bush into a millionaire and helped propel him into the White House.

On Oct. 27, an announcement by the White House made it clear that despite the disastrous intelligence failures that have been driving Bush's policies over the past few years, he's not going to put up with any independent voices on the PFIAB, especially from anyone who might actually know something about foreign intelligence, like, say, Brent Scowcroft." . . .

"US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may have left Berlin, but her visit has left all sorts of bad tastes in the mouths of Germans. Nobody seems terribly convinced by her claim that America doesn't torture. And what is "torture" anyway?"

As my three previous postings (Think About It. . ., More To Think About. . ., and I really Don't Get It. . .,) indicate, I may be reaching "burnout" with my daily researching, talking, and writing about this depressing, and increasingly so, state of our nation's decline into the obviously corrupt theocratic/corporatist/oligarchical and criminally-aggressive opportunistic "Empire" it's becoming.

Today's seven items, listed above, just barely scrape the surface of this continuing, and insane, allowed-corruption-without-revolt. More tomorrow.

Our Founders Were Correct In Their Greatest Fears - For Their Greatest Fears Have Been Realized.